Analysis Of Nicaraguan Sign Language

My younger brother used to ask questions all the time about how certain words were invented. “Who came up with the word sky? Why did they call it that?” were some of many questions I was asked when we were growing up. I always had to tell him that I had no idea or that it just happened. What Jonathan was questioning is a concept that linguists and anthropologists are still trying to answer today. The evolution of language is an incredibly difficult process to determine. Robbins Burling has written an entire book about, The Talking Ape, and still cannot definitively prove that the theories he presents are the exact way that language developed. However, Burling points out a plethora of evidence that points in such a direction. One piece of

His argument is that, “conventionalized instrumental acts” were “the first hints of the abilities that eventually led to language” (Burling 108). He goes a step further and hypothesizes that as ability grew, these instrumental acts became more and more arbitrary, which led to the development of modern language (Burling 110-111). He proves this point in many ways but specifically discusses modern-day Sign Language as an example of the combination of motivation and conventionalized—closer to what original language would have been, but still fully developed with complex grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that is not easily learned nor can it be picked up solely by observation. Nicaraguan Sign Language, Burling argues is an example of how quickly language can develop as well as the fact that “a full language cannot be invented by a single person, but it is impossible to stop a community from inventing one” (Burling 117). He wants to stress that languages need multiple people to develop—it goes back to the principle that comprehension of someone’s actions has to come before production of a language to explain those behavior, an idea that Burling stresses throughout the

I chose the topic of Nicaraguan Sign Language because it sounded interesting and Burling only briefly mentioned it in the book. I had no idea the importance of studying Nicaraguan Sign Language or the implications it has for the origin of language. I have learned more than I ever thought I would about language as a whole and wish there was a way for linguistics to confirm how language actually developed. Goldin-Meadow’s article complimented The Talking Ape’s main points and expanded upon Burling’s brief mention of Nicaraguan Sign Language. The one point of contention is one that I implied from Senghas’s research, not Goldin-Meadow’s analysis. The fact that deaf children create grammatically complex homesigns with consistent syntax and a wide variety of vocab without anyone to directly communicate with them in their own language, directly goes against Burling’s rejection of a completely innate Universal Grammar, in my